“Yeah, that’d be great,” Nally said as he disappeared into the bathroom.
As soon as the door shut, Jude blew out a breath and raced to get dressed. He’d used Nally’s deodorant in the bathroom and was able to dress in less than a minute. Once that was done, while the shower ran, he went about making Nally’s bed for him.He did not breathe deeply to inhale his friend’s scent, or so he told himself.
Because the temptation to stick around the bedroom to see if Nally would walk out of the bathroom after his shower naked was too much of a, well, a temptation, Jude headed out into the main room of the flat while the shower was still running. He went straight to Nally’s computer on the desk in the corner near the kitchen and turned it on. Since he knew all of Nally’s passwords, he was online, poking around, in no time.
That meant that by the time Nally joined him, fully dressed with his damp hair combed back, Jude had already created a TikTok and YouTube account for him.
“Wow. That was fast,” Nally said, coming up to the desk and leaning forward a little bit to see what Jude was doing.
“I’m fast because this is not my first time on the Ferris wheel,” he said in his posh persona.
Nally laughed, then stepped to the side to pull one of the chairs from the dining table closer. “So what am I supposed to do with all this anyhow?” he asked, sitting close enough that his knees touched Jude’s leg. “I don’t even know where to start with this kind of social media presence.”
“You’re already doing fine with your Instagram account,” Jude said, typing in a few things to bring up that account in another window. “Even though you need to post much more. You can start by cross-posting some of your older content to the other sites. But really, we should record some new stuff. And I’ll show you how to do live videos and things like that.”
“I know this should all be second nature to me and that everyone our age lives more online than in the real world,” Nally said.
“But you’re a Hawthorne, and your entire family lives in the nineteenth century,” Jude finished for him.
Nally laughed, leaning his forehead against Jude’s shoulder for a second. “Yeah, we are all definitely out of place in this century.”
“But that’s what makes you all so brilliant,” Jude said, reaching down and patting Nally’s thigh. He jerked his hand away when the urge to slip it between Nally’s legs to cop a feel jumped up in him. “You’ll do brilliantly at this, too,” he went on, clearing the burr in his throat and ignoring the heat that spilled up his neck to his face. “You’re incredibly photogenic and personable. Once you get the hang of live videos, or even more carefully produced videos, you’ll fall in love with it.”
Those words poked uncomfortably at his chest.
“If you say so,” Nally sighed. He tensed a moment later as Jude clicked through the different open windows. “Wait, go back to my Insta,” he said.
Jude brought up that window again, frowning over what might have triggered Nally.
“Holy fuck, are those all DMs?” Nally said, pointing at the screen.
Jude was used to having dozens of unanswered DMs on all of his socials at any time, so the red bubble in the corner of Nally’s page hadn’t meant anything to him. He clicked on the screen to bring up the long list of notifications.
“Shit,” Nally said, eyes going wide. “I’ve never had so many people message me all at once.”
Jude clicked through some of the messages. They were all just congratulations and praise forTo Serve Himand Nally’s soundtrack. “See?” he said, grinning at his friend. “You are amazing, and everyone thinks so.”
“It’s a lot,” Nally said, sounding slightly sick.
Jude laughed and patted Nally’s leg again before focusing on the screen. “Mate, what kind of Gen Z are you if you don’t love social media attention all the time?” Nally just stared at him, soJude laughed harder. “You’ll get used to it. If you’d like, I can get you started by answering some of this for you.”
“Yes, please,” Nally said, leaning his chin on Jude’s shoulder. “Answer all of it for me. Until I get comfortable with this whole celebrity film composer thing, I don’t think I can handle looking at any of it. I need you as my agent. I need you as a lot of things.”
A spike of…something jolted through Jude, landing in his groin. He promptly ignored it and went on scrolling through Insta messages. “It’s ridiculous to do all this on a desktop,” he said, pretending to be gruff to hide the other things he was feeling. “All of this can and should be done on your phone. Here.” He pulled back from the desk, causing Nally to straighten and inch back as well. “Give me your phone and I’ll download the best editing app. We can spend the rest of the morning doing a crash course in being a social media star.”
Nally laughed. “I should leave that part to you and stick to composing.”
“Whatever you’d like,” Jude said with a shrug. “I’ll do anything for you.”
He said it casually, but Jude had never meant anything more in his life.
FIVE
There wasnothing at all to panic about. Nothing.
Other than the fact that Nally had received three offers to compose for films since the premiere ofTo Serve Him. And the fact that Silver Productions wanted to sign him to an exclusive deal to work for them, especially after the brief tour of interviews and meetings Heath Manfred had taken him on. Oh, and listens of the songs he had on music streaming sites had catapulted so much that the director of one of the big symphony orchestras in Europe had reached out to him about including one of his pieces in their line-up next season. Plus, the LSO wanted to work with him to record the backlog of compositions Nally hadn’t yet recorded.
And that was just the career aspect of the whirlwind surrounding him.
